I Just Curse The Sun
by graceofgod
Summary: ...So I Can Howl At The Moon. Title doesn't fit... Bobby's thoughts at the beginning and end of S4. May continue, but each chapter stands alone. Spoilery. Obviously. Rated for some language. Think I've got it right...
1. Chapter 1

**_A/N: So, I loved Bobby in this episode. The thoughts are so clear on his face but I wanted to explore what seeing Dean back from the dead meant to him. Writing this was kind of a stream of consiousness deal (it scares me, the things that lurk in my head...)_**

Spoilers for 4x01, and by extension the end of S3.

Disclaimer: Again? Seriously? *sigh* Not mine. Title and lyrics from _You Got a Killer Scene There, Man, _by Queens of The Stone Age.

_~~CTS~~_

Over the last few months, I've had more than a few hangovers. Kid called it right when he hefted the whiskey bottle from my desk, joked about 'Parents out of town?' It didn't hide the understanding in his eyes, and damn if I hadn't missed that. I've never seen someone so guarded, so locked down who can't hide a thing behind his eyes from the people who know him.

There's a lot I don't remember, since July thing's've been mostly blurry, hazy. It takes a heck of a lot to take the edge off, so that bottle on the desk wasn't even the latest.

So yeah, there've been a few mornings lately when being sober is about as unappealing as jumping buck naked into a Wendigo's lair in the middle of winter. Hair of the dog, turns out you can make that into a motto for life.

But since New Harmony, there've been a few moments when sobriety just kinda snuck up on me, welcome as clap in a whore-house.

Walking downstairs one morning to find the couch empty, the blankets Sam was burrowed into the night before folded neat and tidy at one end. Kid didn't even leave a note.

Waking up on the side of the road, out of gas and lost as heck, no clue, no memory of anything since sitting at my desk with a new bottle and the satisfying crackle of the seal breaking.

I walked to a gas station and the kid behind the counter musta thought I was nuts when I asked him where we were. Heck, _I_ thought I was nuts when he told me.

Halfway to freakin' Pontiac.

That was about three weeks ago and I ain't touched a drop since. 'Til now, that's been about the fifth hardest thing I've ever done, comes in right behind burying my wife, helping the boys build that damn pyre, walking back to the middle of that damned empty street in Cold Oak.

Last thing on the list is sitting on my couch.

Burying that kid topped it. Felt like I was burying my own damn heart in that coffin.

But since I hugged him tight as I could twenty minutes ago, sniffed sweat and dirt and tears, for the first time in months, the last thing I've wanted was a drink.

He doesn't look at me when I come back into the front room carrying a bowl of hot water and the smallest first aid kit I got. He's got his face buried in about the sixth glass of water so far but who's counting? He sounds almost like Dean again, instead of a chain-smoking, pneumonic blue's singer.

Sitting next to him I can smell my soap, but underneath it's still a raw, earthy smell. It's one I know, one most hunters know though it normally comes with the stink of decay.

Probably a good thing it doesn't this time. I don't think I could've taken him walking through my door smelling like a corpse.

He's staring into the empty glass like it holds the secrets of the universe, like it could tell him how the heck he's sitting on my couch at all. He doesn't seem to notice me sitting next to him, jumps a mile when I grab his left hand.

"Jesus, Bobby."

"Sorry."

Good thing the glass was empty. He reaches out with his right hand, refills it with the last of the pitcher on the table and takes a long, noisy slurp.

Kid's table manners ain't improved any.

I've got no doubt he'd get a laugh out of that, the Winchester sense of humour has always bordered on the bizarrely macabre, Dean's particularly, so I mutter it aloud and sure enough he chuckles.

Still doesn't sound quite right, but it's close enough for government business.

I throw a couple stitches into the still oozing slash in his arm; glad I keep my knives wicked sharp. Clean edges are easier to sew.

It's not until I take a look at his hands and see the bruises and scrapes on his knuckles that it hits me and I'm fully, completely and utterly sober for the first time in four damn months.

"Bobby?"

My turn to jump like a startled kitten.

"You okay man?"

I nod, lying through my teeth as I stare at his wounded hands. _I woke up in a pine box._

"Dammit, ya idjit."

It's out before I can stop it but he doesn't answer, doesn't huff out a familiar laugh, just flinches and sucks in a breath as I start to work ointment into the worst of the cuts.

I've been in some bad places. Heck, I was almost buried alive once, longest minute of my life 'til Bill salted the ghost and dug me out.

_I remember I was a hellhounds' chew toy, then lights out. Then I come to six feet under..._

He mumbles something when I release his hands, relaxing sideways into my couch. Kid looks exhausted, like he's hollow, running on nothing but fumes.

After waking up from the dead and digging himself out of his own grave, most people would be on the floor already. Winchester stubborn can be useful sometimes.

"Get some rest."

He winces at that, shoves himself upright and I wonder at the reaction even as I know exactly what he's about to say to me.

"No. Sam."

A half hour later he's half-asleep in the passenger seat, staring blankly out the windshield and I wonder what he's watching.

It doesn't look like fun.

Kid looks pretty damn good for four months underground, which just means that he's pale as a vampire and his hands are shaking like a junkie coming off a week-long high.

"Dean. Sleep."

He looks sideways at me, like it hurts to meet my eyes and shakes his head slowly. With ghosts like that in his gaze, I guess I wouldn't want to sleep either.

I nod at the radio and he jumps on the offer, shoving the first tape he can find into the deck.

_"What's the difference, we all gonna die. You gonna do something killer? C'mon give it a try."_

He shuts it off as fast as he started it and we finish the ride in silence but the damn song plays in my head. Over and over as I park the car, lead the way up the narrow, dark stairs to the second floor of the hotel and damn if that ain't screwed six ways 'til Sunday, kid hasn't let me go first since he was eight.

Moment he sets eyes on his brother, it's like nothing changed.

He's the first one of us to say anything, first one through the door, first one slammed up against a wall and the first one to crack a bad joke.

The skinned knuckles are a like a bad memory as he looks at me over his brother's shoulder and smiles at me like he's dying all over again, like Sam's the only thing keeping him upright.

Like he's the only thing that's solid. That's real.


	2. Lonely Nights, Lonelier Dawns

_**A/N:The finale in South Dakota. Mild language. Title from 'Devour' by The Blackwater Fever. **_

_~~LN~~_

There's a pit in my stomach and dammit, it's one I know too well. Phone rings and I almost don't answer it, just stand there watching my hand shake above the receiver.

_Bad news._

My teeth grind together, impatience warring with fear. It's always bad news, these days, and every time I listen to the moment of quiet after the ring tone cuts off, the static on the open line, I remember the jolt that dropped me to the floor right on this spot a year ago.

Kid never said anything, but I didn't believe him when he called me. On the nights when it ain't the damn apocalypse keeping me awake, that memory does.

I snap my hand closed into a fist and leave the phone to ring twice more before it stills. Whoever it is, can wait. There's only two people I wanna be hearing from now, and since the pit in my stomach is chewing itself a bigger hole with every breath, I'm not sure I can stand to hear what they'll say.

_Winchester news. Always the worst._

Turning away I head for the front room and the fire that's burnt down to embers. Stabbing at it, throwing on a couple of logs I catch sight of the scorch mark on the wall under the window. It's cooled now, finally, and I can reach out and touch the sooty plaster, trace the feather shape seared into the wall right next to where he was standing yesterday.

"Friggin' angels. Dicks with wings."

No-one comes to chastise the profanity, or smite me down for it and, again, I find myself wishing they would. No-one else has the power to snatch someone away like that, standing right in front of me one moment, gone the next, nothing left behind but a whiff of scorched wallpaper and a perfect feather burnt into my wall.

And all I've been able to do since is hang around waiting. Sidelined. I'm not even sure who's got the worse deal this time.

"Dammit, Dean." I smack the wall with the flat of my hand. "Both've ya idjits better get back here safe."

It's not even a prayer anymore, just a pointless lie I don't believe for a second. They won't be coming back here in one piece. There'll be a price to pay, there always is for those boys.

I wish I could pay it for them.

The phone rings again and I ignore it again, pushing to my feet to pace along the old path worn into the carpet. I can remember the day that carpet was new, the look on my Ellie's face when she saw it. This place doesn't look much like the home she made it but then, the man she made it for is long gone. I buried him with her ashes two nights after I drove the demon out of her with more luck than skill.

My head swims mid-step, vision blurring out for a moment and I stumble, catching myself against the desk only to discover that it's shaking. The whole damn house is shaking, a fine tremor running through the walls and floor and sifting dust from the ceiling.

It lands in a pentagram that matches the one laid under the floorboards in iron. Something twists and unfolds in me, squashing my heart and lungs against my ribs as I crouch, press two fingers against the nearest point of the sigil and the floor is warm, heat pulsing against my skin.

"Ah, _dammit _boys."

The phone rings again and I turn to it as I stand, the earlier resolve to not answer it forgotten but I haven't even made it one step before the computer in the other room chimes merrily again and again and again.

Messages, streaming in, one after the other and I don't need to read a single one of them to know they're from hunters whose Devils Traps have just turned sickly-warm.

I stop in my tracks, wait out the noise until the last ring fades into an echo and there's just the quiet house and me again. Empty.

It smells of hot metal and char, tastes of ash in my mouth and in my head I flashback, listen to the desperation in my own voice.

_End of the world big._

"Well then let it end," I murmur, finally getting it. My knees turn to water and I need a drink in the worst way but I don't go to the single bottle in the kitchen. "Dammit, boys," I whisper again and try not to hear the way it cracks and trembles.

I let my knees go and fold to the floor, sitting there on the edge of a splash of sunlight, watching it blaze across the worn, too-warm carpet, turning slowly gold then bloody and finally dark as the Earth turns itself into its own shadow.

I wonder if there'll even be another dawn, and I'm not tired at all. Weary, worn down, sick to death of fighting, but this could be the end of the world and as much as I hate it right now, I don't want to miss a single moment of what time there is left.


	3. Radio Silence

_**Tag to 5x10, Abandon All Hope. Because it had to be tough, sitting and waiting...**_  
_**A/N 1: As always, major spoilers! This one just had to be done. Superbly beta'd by RoweenaC.**_  
_**Enjoy!**_

_**:: ::**_

Moment the radio goes dead in my hand, I know none of us are comin' out of this unscarred. We're gonna lose, no matter what happens in Carthage, I could feel it somewhere, deeper than blood or bone or boys, that girl.

Don't matter who comes back, we've already lost.

And I'm stuck here, waiting, sitting in this damn chair.

Never have been good at doin' nothin' and making this place cripple-friendly is as good a way as any to keep busy so I wheel my ass into the kitchen and start workin' on the bars the boys helped me start to fit on either side of the fridge. The day I can just grab a beer for myself... Doesn't take too long before those bars are ready to test out, so I put 'em to good use and damn if that bottle don't feel good in my hand. Cold and dripping condensation over my fingers, corner of a label peeling away.

But the beer tastes like ash.

It's left behind me on the table as I wheel back into the living room, cross to the table and the phone on it. Sitting there again, watching it, I can see a faint mark on the wall in the corner, where a feather scorched a shadow right down to the brick. Reaching down, I can let my fingertips dangle an inch above the floor, where the devil's trap still radiates warmth, months after that long night, when the angels snatched that boy out from under my nose, when we all got played for the biggest suckers the world's ever seen.

Everytime I go into town, supply runs or research, or just needing to get out of this damn place for a while, I find myself wonderin'; if they knew what we've done, what we've been party too, what would they do?

Would they, _could _they all find it in themselves to forgive us? We didn't know what we were doing, we thought we were fighting on the right side when all along, the only right side was the one that looked wrong, the one we couldn't ever chose, not then.

A laugh slides free, startles me so bad I nearly tip over the chair, still leaning sideways, soaking up the low heat of the iron under my floor.

"Most like, they'd just string us up," I mumble, righting myself, my gaze catching on the dining table through the archway, the bottle and glasses on it sparkling against the window. If I looked close, I knew I could see fingerprints, caught in the light, written there forever.

Never thought I'd see the day the Harvelle's sat down to try and teach an angel how to drink.

"_Goddammit!"_

The phone, books, papers, all of it crashes down as I sweep everything on the desk to the floor. I want to shout, to curse at God, the Devil, all of them but I can't get anything out past the fist in my throat, squeezing so tight I can hardly even breathe.

The camera's there, in amongst the scattered research, flashbulb smashed to a thousand winking shards. I wheel over to it, slowly, find the lens cracked and the tripod warped and my eyes burn as I stretch out, far as I can, manage to catch hold of the case.

The film's intact inside.

I can't stop shaking as I cart the whole broken mess to the closet I turned into a darkroom years ago, after a drugstore clerk asked a few too many questions about the roll of film I took in to be developed. It was werewolves that time, trying to figure out a cure, tracing the stages of the change through a lens and all it got me was a visit from a concerned sheriff who thought I was making some kind of weird-ass snuff movie.

It's a stretch to reach the counters and the basins and it hurts, burns right in along the scar in my side, cramps all down my legs that are the only thing I've been able to feel in them in months.  
Rinsing the film, adding developer and the stop bath, I can't figure out what it is I'm waiting for. It's crawling along my nerves, anticipation of _something _I don't even know I want to come. It ain't until I'm stirring the print in the fixer that I hear the radio burp static in the other room, and that's when I know that I've been waiting for them to call. Don't think I ever moved so fast when I could walk, but next thing I know I'm hunched over the radio and there's nothing but silence on the other end.  
"Just interference."  
I cling to it, desperately, hope to God that's all it was. Wheel slowly back to the closet, heart like lead in my throat.  
By the time they stumble out of thin air into the middle of my living room, the print's developed and dried and already creased, marked with my fingerprints. They stagger around on the rug and I can't tell who's holding who up, except that maybe all three want to fold. I'm useless again, a spectator as they trip and almost go down, until a long arm shoves Sam out of the tangle. He shuffles away, pitches forward and almost hits the deck, barely catching himself against the desk with shaking hands as he watches Castiel lower his brother to my couch.  
Don't let myself think, just yet, about the fact that it's only three of them. It's not like I expected more, anyway, and having so many should feel like a bonus. It doesn't, not really, but Dean's busy retching over the angel's arm wrapped around his chest and I can see how hard the kid's working to hold it in, to hold everything in; see it in the way his shoulders are up around his ears and his hand is fisted so tight in Jimmy Novak's trench-coat that I can hear it tearing, even over the noises they're all making.  
"Sam, get a bucket," I snap, wait just long enough to see him start to move. There's tears on his face as he ducks past me, bright in the firelight, old and new but he won't look at me, doesn't seem to be seeing anything. He grabs for the trash can by the desk, misses it by a mile and I know his brother's concussed already, but I couldn't see any sign of an injury on the younger Winchester's head.  
"Sam?"  
"No. 'M fine," he grates out, fumbles at the can again and gets ahold of it this time, takes it back to the couch just in time. He leans into his brother, hip against Dean's shoulder, and I can see clear across the room the way Dean leans back into him as he spits into the makeshift bucket.  
Castiel shifts away, moves too quickly from _there_ to _here, _standing in front of me.  
"What happened?"  
I don't want to know, just want to let it be, but someone needs to ask. Someone needs to remember.  
"I don't know."  
"You weren't there?"  
"I was... trapped."  
And maybe it's just me but there's something in his voice, something that's maybe a little like helplessness, like grief. When I look up at him, he's staring over at the table with its glasses and the mostly empty bottle.  
"Castiel?"  
"Look after them," he says, not moving a muscle as he winks out.  
"Yeah, I'll do that," I mutter, see the photo flutter on he desk as the air rushes around me to fill the space where he was. I turn away from it, roll over to where Sam's dropped down to sit next to his brother on the couch, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. Dean's slumped against his shoulder, face grey, just a thin sheen of bloody sweat streaked across his brow giving his face any colour.  
"Boys?"  
Sam twitches, Dean doesn't move so much as an inch and neither of them say anything.  
"Boys. C'mon."  
Sam looks up at me then, gaze red-rimmed and hollow.  
"They're gone, Bobby."  
For a moment, he's just a kid again, the scared boy who hid in my attic when John came back busted up from a hunt, the same grieving brother who'd asked me if I knew what to do next, when they'd lost everything.  
"I know, Sam."  
He shifts, leans forward like he's about to stand and Dean hisses, flinches away. Just like that, Sammy's gone again and Sam twists in his seat, catches his brother, tips him back against the arm. He's thumbing up Dean's eyelids, scowling at what he sees in his brother's eyes and he only wobbles a little as he pushes to his feet again, heads for the bathroom and the first aid kit.  
Leaving me alone with Dean.  
For a long time, there's just the crackle of the fire and he swallows every time it pops, pales a little further. When he finally speaks, I almost miss it, too caught up in wondering and remembering.  
"She came back for me, Bobby."  
"What?"  
"Jo. She... the hellhounds. I was pinned and she, she just blew them away."  
I look up at him, see him sprawled boneless across the arm of my couch, staring hard at the ceiling, as if he can see it there. Maybe he can.  
"Why'd she do that?"  
I haven't got an answer and it's quiet again, just two battered, busted hunters who should be used to grieving by now.

It takes most of a day before Dean can stand up long enough.  
The cut on his temple isn't deep, but it's still angry and raw in the firelight. He's barely spoken a half dozen words since he asked me that, and most've those have been to ask for a bucket or a blanket or a glass of water. It was Sam who told me what happened, spilling out the story between gulps of whiskey as we finished off the bottle they started, garbled fragments of hopeless resolution, of a mother's love and of the fireball that tore that town apart.  
Now, there's just one thing left to do.  
They won't be spoken of again, unless it's in a nameless toast a year from now, if we're still here to raise a glass to them.  
The boys are standing beside me, none of us saying anything as the fire catches slowly.  
And I know none of us are going to come out of any of this unscarred.

_**:: ::**_

_**A/N 2: **_So, yeah. Bobby's head wasn't such a happy place to be last season... Ta for reading!


End file.
